Menu

ThirdScribe’s Author Newsletter Service

There is no secret that having an email newsletter is essential to an author’s commercial success. Whether the author maintains their own, or their publisher does it for them, someone has to do it.

When ThirdScribe first launched, we had a basic newsletter system included. While it had nice email templates and an easy writing interface, it still required authors to have a sending method of their own. While this was easy to accomplish, it wasn’t something we could assist authors with, other than to direct them to various vendors. A complication which significantly detracted from an otherwise beneficial system. Subsequently, the system was never used and was eventually “retired” from our offerings.

Instead, we focused on encouraging authors to sign up for other vendors and making sure our tools (forms, slide outs, and landing pages) worked well with them. However, there is a limit to how much we can help an author with tools that are not provided by us. We’ve spend a good bit of time teaching authors about MailChimp API’s, integrations, and composing emails. While our members understood that we can’t control someone else’s tools, we could sense the disappointment that came with that realization.

And then Instafreebie came into the picture. And collective book giveaway contests. And suddenly fairly new authors acquired huge email lists that required a paying level at MailChimp – one they couldn’t justify with their current sales.

As a result, we decided to jump back into the Newsletter fray and offer our authors a complete newsletter solution. We soft launched it in November, and we’re happy with the results.

The ThirdScribe Author Email Newsletter service is available now to all paying members of ThirdScribe. Since paying plans start at $1/mo, that’s pretty darn good.

We Know You’ve Got Questions…

We know you’ve got a bunch of questions about this, so we’ll try and get ahead of them here.

“What Can It Do?”
The Author Newsletter service at ThirdScribe is a complete newsletter system, and we mean that. It can do pretty much everything you can do at paying systems like Aweber, MailChimp, ConstantContact, etc. Things like:

Get, import, and export signups

Compose and Send Newsletters

Drag and Drop mail design interface

Track receipts, opens, and clicks

Set Up custom mailing lists

Send automatic response emails

Send event based “drip” emails

Send blog post subscription email

Integrates with ThirdScribe Author website

“How Does It Work?”
The Newsletter service is built right into your site via our Newsletter Add-On. Activate that, and you’re up and running. There is a (very) small amount of set up – basically entering your name, email, and creating your newsletter lists. If you need help, just send us a help request.

We handle all sending, verification, and security – so authors don’t need to figure out how to set up the SPF/DKIM certifications.

“How Much Does It Cost?”
It’s included in all paying plans, which start at $5/mo.

“Are There Any Limits?”
The Basic Plan ($5/mo) has a 2,000 subscriber limit, much like most economical newsletter plans.

The Standard Plan ($25/mo) has no subscriber limitation, but does max at 40,000 sent emails a month.

The Premium Plan ($55/mo) is practically unlimited (though we have a “super-high bandwidth level” for those sending more than 200,000 emails a month).

“Is It Easy To Use?”
Well, that’s pretty subjective, but we think so. The email builder uses a drag-and-drop interface and lets you use images directly from your site’s media library. You can set up conditional emails from a simple drop down system.

Plus, if you get into any trouble or have questions, we’ll be able to help you.

Committed to Supporting Authors

ThirdScribe is committed to helping authors reach their audience, and this is one more way we can help. If you’re an author and not yet a member, please consider joining us. We can do a lot more than you think.

Rob is the founder of ThirdScribe, a unique author services platform and social network. As a naval officer and diver, he spent a majority of his career doing a lot more than you would think with a lot less than you can imagine -- a skill that has proven extremely valuable in the start-up world. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.